Health Robotics Receives Overwhelming Support from its Customers for its McKesson-CytoCare Partnership

BOZEN, Italy - Health Robotics today reported that on the heels of its recent partnership announcement with McKesson, it has received categorical support from virtually all of its 13 North American customers in just a few days since the partnership was publicly announced. While several customers’ hospital policies prevent them from publicly commenting on industry events, a few reactions to the McKesson-Health Robotics partnership [CytoCare Robot only] were cleared for publication.

“We have seen McKesson’s announcement that it has become the exclusive North American strategic partner for Health Robotics’ CytoCare, an Oncology I.V. Admixtures Robot implemented at our hospital in early 2008. We went “live” about a year ago and have since utilized CytoCare to prepare patient doses from as many as 60 different drug vials of antibiotic, chemotherapy, and/or monoclonal antibody therapies for Ampicillin, Busulfan, Carboplatin, Cisplatin, Cladribine, Cyclophosphamide, Cytarabine, Dacarbazine, Daunorubicin, Doxurubicin, Epirubicin, Etoposide, Fluororacil, Ganziclovir, Gemzar, Idarubicin, Ifosfamide, Irinotecan, Melphalan, Mesna, Methotrexate, Mitoxantrone, Oxaliplatin, Paclitaxel, Rituximab, Vinblastin, Vincristine, and Vinorelbine. CytoCare has filled patient doses with three different brands of 50ml to 1L i.v. Bags (Baxter Viaflex, B|Braun PAB, B|Braun Excel) and Becton Dickinson PlastiPak syringes in 3, 10, and 60cc sizes. The University of Colorado Hospital is a long-standing customer of McKesson Corporation, and looks forward to extending our relationship ever farther,” stated Nancy Stolpman, Director of Pharmacy.

“We have been following the recent developments in I.V. robotics by multiple start-up companies and have evaluated alternative technologies at both Duke University Hospital and Duke Children’s Hospital and Health Center. We noticed that all of these start-up companies have ideas with merit, but thought their service infrastructure in North America should be more fully developed. We will be taking delivery of i.v.STATION in two to three months and will be conducting a validation trial of the technology. We plan to utilize i.v.STATION for batch compounding of parenteral doses including serial dilutions, and we will utilize the robot for patient-specific doses after the interface to our McKesson Clinical System is complete. Given the fact that Health Robotics’ HL7 interface technology is identical for both CytoCare and i.v.STATION, we are very pleased to see the announcement of the McKesson-Health Robotics strategic partnership and are confident that it will only make our i.v.STATION HL7 interface efforts smoother. In addition, it is very reassuring to see such a mature and omnipresent service organization like McKesson Corporation endorse Health Robotics’ technology. We look forward to expand our relationship with McKesson Corporation,” stated Paul Bush, Chief Pharmacy Officer.

“At Allegiance Health we have been following robotics applications for hospital pharmacy for over a decade. In the last two years we have focused on I.V. robotics, especially the worldwide progress of Health Robotics. During the last twelve months we have worked closely with Health Robotics and are taking delivery of i.v.STATION in October. We have also completed capital budget approval for the purchase of CytoCare. While we have always been impressed with Health Robotics’ products and the commitment of their executive leadership such as Gaspar DeViedma, we have had some concerns with the ability of Health Robotics as a non-USA company to find a local partner that could provide responsive, experienced, customer-focused service, and support required for this sophisticated technology in the United States. The McKesson-Health Robotics strategic partnership announcement is a great match-up, and definitely puts to bed any support or service concerns we had in the past,” stated Thomas Crampton, Director of Pharmacy.

“We are very excited to see American customers’ overwhelming support for the McKesson partnership, and to compare and contrast such positive feedback with prior comments about much needed local improvements in skill, experience, competence, and commitment to service standards. We look forward to McKesson taking over Help Desk, Tier 1 and Tier 2 support, Implementation Activities, Spare Parts Inventory, Professional Training, FDA Regulatory assistance, HL7 Interface Engineering, and all other service activities that needed local improvement according to our American customers, and leave only Tier 3 support, manufacturing, and R&D activities to Health Robotics, as was originally planned and regulated in prior distribution contracts. While there is expected to be much “noise” and “spin” about our partnership decisions, we wish to let our customers set the record straight about CytoCare [which has never been in doubt as far as the product's capabilities], and from October onwards, to also start to vouch for McKesson’s service. CytoCare is a complex and revolutionary technology that requires highly-skilled engineers and a sizeable service commitment, which is why we are very pleased to have partnered with a world-class service and engineering organization such as McKesson Automation,” stated Werner Rainer, Heath Robotics’ CEO.

About Health Robotics:

Health Robotics is the global leading supplier of life-critical intra-venous medication preparation, compounding, and dispensing Robots, providing healthcare facilities in four continents with robotics technology and software automation solutions. The world-leading solutions CytoCare [hazardous IVs], i.v.STATION [non-hazardous IVs], i.v.SOFT [workflow engine] and the future development of TPNstation, have and will greatly contribute to ease global hospitals’ growing pressures to improve patient safety through the effective and efficient production of sterile, accurate, and ready-to-administer IVs, to eliminate life-threatening drug-exchange errors, to decrease other medication errors and sterility risks, and to work more efficiently, increase throughput, reduce waste, and contain costs. For more information, please visit www.health-robotics.com

For additional information, please contact: Health Robotics Gaspar G. DeViedma Europe: +39(346)963-4934 USA: +1(609)-980-7976 gaspar.deviedma@health-robotics.com

Source: Health Robotics

For additional information, please contact: Health Robotics, Gaspar G. DeViedma, Europe: +39(346)963-4934, USA: +1(609)-980-7976, gaspar.deviedma at health-robotics.com